Portrait of a Living Archive

CHICC photographers Jamie and Gwen have an exhibition of portrait photography opening in the John Rylands Library this month.

“When people think about libraries they tend to think of them as the ancestral home of written rather than visual culture. The John Rylands Library houses a significant collection of art, from various cultures and a range of historical periods.

Similarly, when people think of a specialist library like the Rylands they are often unaware that our collections are constantly growing with new acquisitions and that these teem with the life of the living alongside the venerable dead. Contemporary poets, novelists, artists, translators, book-binders and printers appear in our collections and one way to connect with them is through the medium of photographic portraiture.

Over the past year, the library’s photographers, Jamie Robinson and Gwen Jones, have made a series of portraits that bring us face to face with some…